You’ve probably heard my brilliant definition of stress; I’ve said it often before: stress is the difference between what you’ve got and what you wanted. The further away you are from your desires, the more it hurts. If you are nearly there, you start to relax. It’s only natural.

I dived into extra detail on this in my block-buster mind-bender: Psychiatry Without Drugs (formerly Real Secrets To Transforming Mental Health: same text exactly, but re-titled). Norman Shealy MD, who you may know of, described this book as “The most important book in the whole history of psychiatry”!

LINK: https://transformingmentalhealth.com/

I have recently been re-reading another very capable book by my friend Patrick K. Porter PhD. He’s a former very successful personal growth trainer, and is an expert in hypnotism and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

When I say “former”, I only mean that his life has now taken an amazing new direction, with the development of his state-of-the-art brain entrainment tool: the BrainTap. I have one. It links to a software app on my smartphone, and I can download and enjoy countless tracks for growth, inspiration, relaxation, creativity and all those cool things I have written about often, which happen when you use binaural beats and photic driving to create brain entrainment.

Back to Patrick Porter’s book! It’s title is Thrive in Overdrive (How to Navigate Your Overloaded Lifestyle) and I have Patrick’s permission to share anything in there and my attention came to rest on a marvelous, simply hack to reduce stress levels. It could change your life!

There’s also a neat little stress assessment called a “stress quotient”. It’s attached to this email, so you can download it, print it out and then write directly on the test sheets and score yourself!

Here’s how to radically reduce stress. It’s about breaking bad habits and dysfunctional responses…

1. Example: feel upset; “Gawd, I need a drink!” That’s dysfunctional.
2. Example: feel upset; go for a walk. That’s better. It clears the head and you can think what to do about the situation.

Patrick has a neat little hack along these lines. You can print out a chart if you wish. It isn’t necessary. Just write your answers alongside each stressor in your life.

But that means you have to be aware what the stressors are in your life! That’s right. So a little enhancement by way of seeing what goads and aggravates you is a good self-assessment in itself.

Far from being self-aware, most people are oblivious of what stirs them up. All they sense is that something is wrong; life isn’t good; I don’t feel happy any more; or whatever is going on. So getting a handle on what the issues are is a good start.

Here’s Patrick’s tool:

In your journal or a notebook, label several pages in a row with days of the week, as a heading. Then, for each day, divide the page into 3 columns. Label column 1 Stressor, column 2 My Response and column 3 Healthier Response.

Each day, take a few minutes to recall the stressors you faced. Write them down. Then in column 2 alongside, write down how you responded.

For example, if you woke up late, that would be a stressor. Traffic, meetings, a rushed lunch, a disagreement with a co-worker, technology failures, a sick child, an argument with your spouse, a long line at the grocery store, and anything that gets you upset, frustrated, angry, or nervous should be added to your list.

When you finish writing your activities and Stressors for the first day you may see, perhaps for the first time, just how much pressure you are under. At the end of the day, sit down with your list and fill in that My Response section. Did you get angry, frustrated, and anxious? Did you overeat or turn to another substance? Did you lose your temper with your family later in the day?

Was there a better way for you to handle each situation? Write down your ideas in column 3: Healthier Response. This is the area that should get most of your time and attention. What if you had remained in a resourceful state? What would have been the outcome if you’d done so? The more you think it through, the more likely you are to start changing your response patterns.

Patrick tells us to repeat this exercise daily for an entire week. Do you see any patterns developing? Were you more resourceful later in the week than you were at the start?

Actually, he later tells us to do this indefinitely. The few minutes a day it takes could add years of quality living to your lifespan. Heck, I can only agree with that!

It’s important to remember that if you stayed resourceful and didn’t experience stress, your blood pressure probably didn’t elevate, your heart and respiratory rates most likely didn’t increase, and your body didn’t get a rush of insulin, cortisol, or thyroid hormones, which means you are already on your way to improved health and have reduced your risk for lifestyle disease (heart attack, stroke, diabetes, cancer etc.)

If you are worried about your stress levels, send us the results of your test score and someone will advize you on action.

Finally: You can get yourself a copy of Thrive in Overdrive (and Patrick’s other books) on Amazon.

To read more about the BrainTap and perhaps get yourself one, go here:

LINK: https://transformingmentalhealth.com/

Well, that’s it. I hope you are successful at tuning out stress. But don’t stress yourself doing it! Ha ha!

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor

The secret is all about finishing what you start.

It might seem too simple to work but when I tell you just how simple it really is, you’ll likely wonder why you didn’t think of it before this moment.  

The Inside of Your Head

Your mind is filled with clutter that you don’t even realize you have.  It messes up your moments, your days, your years, your decades because all that clutter is inefficient (as most clutter tends to be).  

Everything that happens in life is a cycle.  A well-known philosopher named Alfred North Whitehead defined this as an action loop.  There is a start, a finish, and the part in the middle that is the process or the action.  

This applies to small processes such as, “I need to organize the linen closet” to much bigger tasks such as, “I need to go back to school so I can change my career.”  These loops are part of your home, your profession, your personal relationships, your health, and even your meals.

They can be tasks you recognized needed doing today or unfinished business from thirty years ago.  The more “open” loops you have, the less efficient you are on a daily basis because your mind is littered with information that is outdated, chores that were never done but remain in the back of your mind, and even people who are no longer part of your life.  

Open loops = time slows.

Closed loops = time progresses.

In order to change your life, you have to close out your unfinished business!

Make a list of your own “unfinished” business.  Separate them into categories and label them by importance.  Take the least important open loop on your list and complete it today.  If that open loop is “clean out the freezer,” then get up, do that task, and close that loop for good.  Then take the next least important task that might be “send a card to so-and-so for their birthday,” and then the next “take clothes to charity,” until you have several smaller, less critical loops closed.  

Why go in order of least important to most important?  To train your mind to close loops, you must have practice.  The best practice is to conquer small bites of clutter.

In my teachings, I stress that there are two very distinct aspects of these action loops that makes them such an important part of your daily existence.  They also define whether your life is well planned and focused or filled with random disorder that gets you nowhere you want to be.

Efficiency: the orderly way in which you complete your action loops.

Power: the speed at which you complete your action loops.  

If you planned to organize your filled attic, you wouldn’t start in the middle of the room and try to carry a big piece of furniture downstairs.  You wouldn’t have the space to maneuver it! You have to work your way to that large armoire or table by organizing the stacks of boxes and clearing room for you to work.  

That is how to change your thoughts to be efficient and close loops in an orderly fashion.

When you start with small tasks, you are able to close more loops in less time.  The more clutter you clear away, the faster you will become at removing the cobwebs of random information and responsibilities from your mind.  

You alter your thinking to a place of power and close loops more quickly.

When you do not have control over your own thoughts, you feel sluggish, disoriented, and disconnected.  As you close loops, you gain strength and focus.

That is when things truly get interesting.  You see, most of mankind “goes with the flow,” doing the same things that everyone else does because that is what is considered “normal.”  Normal is also “average.”

If you are content in your life, without the desire to do more than what you are doing right now, then you are a normal, average person who can close loops and improve efficiency in your daily life.  It will make you feel more energetic and likely happier.

However, if you’re someone looking to change your life…

If you’re a person who is driven, who is always looking to do more, be more, and accomplish more, then the next step is learning how to manipulate your action loops.  

There will still be a start and an end, but the process in the middle will now be filled with your “willful intent” to complete specific actions while also actively foreseeing and stopping those things that you do not want in the process.  

Cause: starting a process with the willful mindset that you will accomplish it.

Prevention: preventing those pitfalls in the process that will derail you.

Desired Transformation: getting the results you want.

Producing real, measurable change in your life is not difficult.  It simply takes practice and concentration.

Make your list of open loops, start with the smallest items on your list, begin closing those loops, and then apply that process to the larger, more complex unfinished business.  

Once you’ve closed as many loops as you can – no matter how old or the level of importance – you can begin to actively open loops with your willful intent, affect change in your life, see them through to completion, and close those loops with your desired transformation in hand.  

It may seem too simple but once you make your list, once you see how many open loops you have in your house, your job, your relationships, and so on, you’re going to understand why you can’t seem to get anything done.  

Clear the clutter.  Change your life.  Embrace the magnificent potential of your mind.  

In 2017 at least 438 people were shot in the USA over Thanksgiving weekend (Thursday – Sunday), according to Gun Violence Archive, which compiles shooting statistics from police reports and news clips. On Thanksgiving Day alone, at least 95 people were shot, a third of them fatally.

2017 was not a unique year. Far from it.

Take one particular 2016 Thanksgiving gathering in Knoxville, Tennessee. Joel Michael Guy Jr. visited his parents and sisters at his parents’ house that they’d recently contracted to sell. The Thanksgiving meal went well, and the sisters returned home, but Joel attacked his parents with a knife that evening, dismembered their bodies and attempting to dissolve the body parts in chemicals before scattering the grotesque remains about the home

Another crazed family member was Paul Merhige in 2009. After finishing off a traditional Thanksgiving meal, the family gathered around a piano to sing Christmas carols. No sooner had they closed the piano lid than Merhige shot and killed his twin sisters—one of whom was pregnant—an aunt, and a six-year-old cousin and wounded a sister’s husband. “I have been waiting twenty years to do this!” Merhige confessed to Florida authorities with relief.¹

Why am I telling you this? Just to upset your holidays?

Actually, I’ve repeated the warning frequently over the years since I came to live in the USA, because I have a special understanding to add. I’ll come to that in a minute.

Historic Shame and Baloney

In Europe, of course, we don’t do Thanksgiving. November fog and cold gives us nothing to be thankful for! Seriously though, the REAL Thanksgiving, shorn of all the B*S*, was nothing to do with thanks for the first harvest of the Pilgrim Fathers (yes, true, there was a festive meal). But the first use of the word “Thanksgiving” was a feast to celebrate the senseless slaughter of hundreds of native Indians, the Pequots. This story is just more American baloney dressed up as myth.

In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival, which is their equivalent of a Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries, who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared “A Day Of Thanksgiving” because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.

Cheered by their “victory”, the brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with a many as 500 slaves regularly left the ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian scalps, to encourage as many deaths as possible.

Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of “thanksgiving”, to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls.

² From wikipedia.com

So Thanksgiving and murderous stupidity go hand in hand in this country. The fact remains that there is a huge uptick in violence in modern day USA at this season. Why? There are two medical reasons I know. One, as a friend quipped a few years back: “Too much DNA in the room.” People in the same family often have serious issues and conflicts which are not shared with strangers. Sometimes disputes just boil to the surface, because everybody is there stamping on each others’ emotional buttons and triggering bad feeling, which is likely what set off Paul Merighe’s savage rampage.

Brain Allergies

But the other reason is to do with food allergies. If you have read any of my books, especially DIET WISE you’ll know that one of the commonest reactions to food is what we call “brain allergies”. It can cause confusion, anxiety, brain fog, disorientation and depression. BUT ESPECIALLY A TENDENCY TO VIOLENCE.

I made medico-legal history in 1987, with a famous case of an Irish boy who was made murderously violent by food allergies. He had tried to strangle his stepfather. It was the first time a legal court, anywhere on earth, accepted evidence (from me) that food allergies could do this.

The boy pleaded guilty but was given a conditional discharge, the condition being that he stick to my recommended diet!

I have had many other cases, from a schoolboy who tried to punch his teachers to the ground, made wild by an allergy to wheat (he ate half a loaf per day), to a woman who tried to stab her husband. Brain allergies can cause a LOT of violence.

Food allergies are common offenders, because we put so much of the stuff in our bodies. What do we do most at Christmas and Thanksgiving? EAT! We stuff ourselves with excess levels of foods that are unsuitable and which inflame the brain: sugar, grains, stimulants, dairy +++. No wonder that violence is one of the outcomes.

That’s even BEFORE the alcohol.

Throw in drinks and it’s a recipe for disaster. Remember my friend and mentor, the late Theron Randolph (who admired DIET WISE very much, under it’s original title) used to say that alcoholic drinks were like “jet-propelled food allergy”. The mere presence of alcohol intensifies any tendency to react to the food.

I’ve explained ALL THIS AND A TON MORE in my magnificent book on mental illness of all kinds, from insane violence, to schizophrenia, depression, dementia and anxiety— AND ALL THE TREATABLE (CORRECTABLE) CAUSES, from food allergy, to hormonal imbalances, pyrroluria, vitamin deficiencies, heavy metal inflammation, parasites AND MORE—PLUS STRANGE THINGS like gender dysphoria, “hungry ghosts”, soul retrieval, possessions, and more…

KEEP THANKSGIVING SAFE IN YOUR HOUSE!
Get this book…
Go here and learn more about REAL SECRETS TO TRANSFORMING MENTAL HEALTH.
I think it’s my BEST EVER book. It’s HUGE! 

24 college students or recent graduates studying for law exams (pretty tough) were monitored with brain images, similar to MRI scans, to measure changes in brain volume and function. The study leader was Allyson Mackey, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

When used, brains grow. Pathways are strengthened. When used hard, they grow even more.

And IQ can be increased. This applies in adults, as well as developing children.

The old idea you are smart or not smart is fast becoming medieval, with burgeoning evidence to the contrary.

But there is a paradox here…

People with little or no brains, can still think and function normally. For example hydrocephalus cases, with as little as 10% residual brain tissue or even less, still think as usual; you couldn’t tell the difference. So far as I know, no-one has tried the brain plasticity enhancement technique with hydrocephalics… That would be interesting!

The study was published recently in the journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, August 22^nd, 2012, and UC Berkeley issued a news release.

Also posted at Food For The Mind and Fire For The Soul